Page 165 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Dear Renwick,” she murmured. “In London now and setting up shop as an artist. I have to marry and move away. But I want you to know I will never forget you.” Her breath hitched, but she pressed out the next words. “You will always be in my heart.”
His arm twitched, and he didn’t respond. He was asleep.
Downstairs, the tall case clock chimed once.
Ren had adjusted the weights and restarted the mechanism while she mixed the pudding.
She wished now he had left it still, the way the clock had been stopped in the Demant house the moment of her mother’s death.
Let time belong elsewhere, and let them stay together here in this bed, in the shadow of the dying fire, clasped together in eternity like some fairy tale.
In her dream she was standing again before the walled-in churchyard while the mute knocked his tall staff against the wooden gate. The vicar opened it and stood frowning down at her, his black stole dark against his white robes.
What do you have for me? he boomed, and Harriette held up a small wooden casket carved with her initials and inlaid with jewels. Her face burned with the hot rush of tears as she held it toward him.
I have come to bury my heart .
The next day, dressed again in her blacks, Harriette sat against the wall in a cavernous room within Ren’s factory.
The great looms, powered by the flow of the gentle River Sheppey, stood silent for the time being, the immense and constant thrum and throb of their turning parts stilled.
Every man, woman, and, she was surprised to see, some children, stood at attention as Ren spoke from one of the raised platforms that encased the machinery.
Mr. Fripp, the manager, had explained to her that children were employed because they were small enough to wriggle beneath and around the machinery of the looms to reset threads or restore pieces that had slipped free, their smaller bodies and hands able to access places that adults couldn’t.
“Not while the looms are in motion, I hope?” Harriette had asked, but Mr. Fripp merely showed her to a discreet place at the back of the room where she might look on, unnoticed, while Ren rallied his troops.
She wondered which of the men standing at attention, caps in work-roughened hands, had used those same hands to wreak havoc on the town of Shepton Mallet last night.
They had emerged from the Manor to find the village looking as if a great wind had passed through it.
Shop windows had been shattered, and they stepped around owners sweeping glass from sidewalks and clearing pieces of broken furniture from the streets.
A wagon once full of hay sat, still smoldering quietly, in Market Square, possibly the source of the conflagration they’d seen last night.
There was a sullen mood over the town and a tight, angry emptiness in the air.
Sheriff’s men, wearing the badges of their newly deputized offices, walked the streets surveying the damage, and the buzz of gossip named men who had been injured, women who had been trampled, who’d contracted burns, and reporting, in hushed tones, that two men had died.
Died . Harriette felt the smoke in the air sting her nose as she took this in. The fear of loss and agony of unwished-for change had left this destruction, led men to wreck what they could not keep.
She understood a little bit of what must have driven them; she wanted to rail and screech against her own fortune, change her future, too.
But she couldn’t. Instead she drew her heavy veil over her face and let it shield her as she and Ren walked to his factory, as he spoke with Mr. Fripp, as Mr. Fripp halted the machines that spun the cotton and called everyone who had shown up for work that day to the great room.
Harriette was glad the veil hid her blush and her improper thoughts, for she was not able to dwell with appropriate decorum on the gravity of the situation here.
She was not able to hold on to thoughts of her mother’s loss and what that meant.
As Ren stood before the crowd in his saffron silk suit and copper buttons, with the black armband on his sleeve, she recalled how she’d awoken that morning to the sweep of his hand over her body, brushing her neck and her breasts and down her belly to walk his fingers between her legs and stir her arousal.
How she’d turned in his arms and thrown a leg over his hips and fit him inside her like he belonged there.
How they’d stared into each other’s eyes wordlessly as they rocked together, languid and slow, taking their time, drawing out the sensations as long as they could until the pleasure overcame her first and she shuddered and melted against him while he ratcheted to his own release, joining her as the climax rippled between them, passing back and forth.
He’d helped her dress after, lacing her stays and pinning her gown to her bodice as well as any maid, and they’d located his stockings and breeches and shirt and he had turned her toward the bed and told her to lean on her elbows, then he’d lifted her skirts and petticoats and with her rump shamelessly exposed he had taken her from behind, and she’d gasped at the new places he had touched, and when he reached between them to rub at the bud of her pleasure while he stroked her long and hard and deep, she’d been astonished to feel herself rising and responding, hardly believing she could come again until she did, falling apart in his arms, letting herself go limp while he held her hips and stroked to release again, she muffling her cries in the bedclothes while he roared in his triumph.
Then he had let her skirts down and straightened her black lace apron as if hiding all traces of their passion, tucked himself inside his breeches and buttoned up his waistcoat and coat, let her help him into his boots, and they had walked down the street together in a changed world, and she was changed too on the inside, the space between her legs raw and full and humming with a surfeit of pleasure.
She wondered how everyone could not see on her face the wicked, wonderful things they had done to each other, the pinnacles of pleasure she had scaled, the way she was marked and claimed by him.
But no one looked at her while the Earl of Renwick climbed the platform to address his factory workers, and Harriette curled her hands in her gloves and silently willed him strength and a fluent tongue.
She knew he was nervous. Terrified, actually.
She was so proud of him as he stood before the people who depended on him and carefully, in his measured, thought-out speech, assured them that their livelihoods were not at risk.
That he had heard and understood their concerns, and he could not see replacing a skilled man or woman with a machine.
“This fact-factory will not adopt the spinning jen-jenny,” he concluded.
“We will hire-hire more men if needed to match the pw-production of-of other factories. It is the opinion of Mr. Fw-Fripp and my-myself—” He stumbled, beginning to rush, then paused to take a breath and steady his voice.
“This factory benefits from the expertise of real people spinning our thread, not dumb machines.” He paused again.
“And you will all be getting a way—a raise of ten percent of your pay.”
Whatever else he had to say was drowned out in the whoops of relief, disbelief, and pure joy that followed this announcement.
Ren relinquished his perch and was immediately overwhelmed with handshakes and congratulations, some of his workers even going to far as to clap him on the back.
The effrontery to manhandle an earl! Harriette suppressed a smile.
This was because he had sat in the Swan all day yesterday, so he’d said, drinking ale with these men and hearing their grievances.
He’d worked on this speech with her this morning as they broke their fast and dressed and tried to disguise the traces of what they’d been up to before Mrs. Oram and Jags arrived.
“Mrs. Oram is your housekeeper?” Harriette had paused in the act of making the bed.
It was fortunate her Aunt Calenberg had insisted that Harriette take a turn learning various housekeeping skills under her roof.
She understood now that her aunt had been, in her way, training Harriette in what tasks were required in a large household, preparing her for the day when she would be reclaimed as a duchess’s daughter and, in due time, a duchess herself.
In the meantime, Harriette could fix a decent pudding, make up a bed, and make and snuff a fire.
“She has the son who doesn’t speak? Jags?
” She’d heard of the simple boy, had met him once or twice.
Harriette quite liked Mrs. Oram and she wondered at the type of man Mr. Oram must be, to abandon such a wife and the sweet, innocent boy he’d sired.
But she was also aware of how deeply some people feared those who were different.
“I met him yesterday.” Ren paused in the act of arranging his neckcloth and watched her, trying to evaluate her reaction.
“He’s a lovely boy. I’m glad you will give them both a place. It always seemed silly to me that housekeepers aren’t supposed to have family. That they are only to live for the pleasure of their employers.”
That was when he had come to her and interrupted her task of making the bed to hitch up her skirts and—well. Harriette flushed with the memory, caught up in recollection until she realized that two large hulking men had come to stand before her, neither of them Ren.
“Ten percent? Does ‘e mean it, or is ‘is lordship toyin’ wi’ us?” one demanded.
Harriette blinked, gathering her senses. “Bram Wright? You work here? You didn’t take up your father’s trade?”